Love in the Last Days

Starred review from August 21, 2017
Former Brooklyn poet laureate Nurkse (A Night in Brooklyn) transports readers to the “imaginary past known as The Last Days” in his 11th collection, rendering his own haunting version of the story of Tristan and Iseult. The collection follows the narrative of the medieval legend by threading together a mosaic of monologues, most of which belong to Tristan, who talks of his battle wound (“it hurt always, like another soul”) and catalogues strange encounters while hunting. Tristan observes Iseult with wonder and doom: “we were not made for each other,/ but to be the other’s obstacle,/ cherished and loathed like the self.” Nurkse’s Iseult is stoic; her actions prove her to be self-sustaining and magical. Tristan confesses, “I thought we would negotiate/ in the wild, she would be less a Queen./ But no. Each day she wears her robe and crown/ more imperiously, though they are pollen and dew.” Minor players benefit from Nurkse’s crisp attention to detail and knack for contextualization. A character named the chronicler, for example, “chooses fresh pumice and abrades the vellum—/ caul of a stillborn calf—and starts to doodle/ in the soft margin.” Nurkse makes this familiar story something alien, new, and fascinating; like the potion that Tristan and Iseult share, it’s easy to fall under his spell.

September 1, 2017

Former Brooklyn poet laureate Nurkse (A Night in Brooklyn) has selected the powerful love of Tristan and Iseult as the focus of his 11th book of poetry. Deeply rooted in the oldest surviving literary versions of the tale (by Gottfried von Strassburg, Beroul, and Thomas of Britain), Nurkse's long, narrative poems offers many lyric utterances in different voices (Iseult's servant Brangien, Tristan's horse, and, of course, the lovers themselves) as it ranges across the legendary landscapes, blessed and unblessed, of Logres, Morois, and Avalon. The tragic tale of the romance between Tristan and Iseult is famously a lure for talents great and small, but the power and the ambiguities of the many possibilities of the narrative tend to swamp most writers, and Nurkse's poem, while attractive, intelligent, and broadly sympathetic to many perspectives, rarely startles or dazzles. A tad lukewarm yet touching and moving, this faintly melancholy tribute to a legendary passion is perhaps best read side by side with Joseph Bedier's almost affectless prose version. VERDICT Certain to be of interest to Nurkse's readership and fans of Arthurian and medieval legend.--Graham Christian, formerly with Andover-Harvard Theological Lib., Cambridge, MA

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